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I was brought into the digital world kicking, screaming wetting my pants. The concept of digital was unacceptable. I now have over 40 terabytes of 0’s and 1’s. It’s frightening. My IT specialist, my studio manager, and my partner all insist that I take this blog down. We’re going to do it!…against my will. It’s like an iPhone; I can’t stand it, but I have to have it. So I am going to leave you temporarily with the new link and I am going to share one or two photos with you. While looking for a photo for my memoirs I stumbled across this farm in South Africa. Beautiful light, beautiful color and it’s not 5 degrees out. To all the ships at sea, please stay warm I wish you all happy lives. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

To all the ships at sea, approximately two months ago I did a program at B&H Photography called all things in photography are a compromise. The one thing I would like to make perfectly clear; that is not an excuse for me not to do my best. For that matter, it should not be an excuse for anyone to not do their best. Sometimes your best isn’t really up to code. Attached to this blog is a link to a short film on the great, beautiful, Pete Seeger. It was a work in progress and it was never designed to be published in its present format, but given the fact that Pete has moved to the next level of consciousness, please forgive my one-handed blind shooting. No, I did not intentionally cut his head off but the real sin is the microphone was not tweaked as it should have been. Translated: I had no assistant, no sound man, no PA, and no tripod. However, none of those things are an excuse. https://vimeo.com/85390064

Every once in a while the Moon and the stars align and life is good. Over the last twelve years I’ve been using WD exclusively for my studio, gallery, learning center, office (you get the idea). ABSOLUTELY! You are cordially invited to join me on December 11th at the B & H event space and a good time shall be had by all. To all the ships at sea, see you there.

Photographers are creating more and more images and managing your archive so that all the images you create are secure and easily located is essential to the professional photographer. This task is of paramount importance and there are tools that can be of great benefit to the photographer/videographer but on the other hand, many creative’s can find this part of workflow daunting and potentially disastrous. In this seminar we will concentrate on the benefits and show you how to avoid the disasters while providing inspiration from Joe DiMaggio’s work.Joe DiMaggio, a lifelong photographer with an illustrious career shooting; sports, environmental portraits, stock, video content, photo illustrations as well as fine art depends on his vast archive to survive and thrive. This seminar sponsored by WD, a leader in digital storage and hard drives, will highlight Joe’s work and show you in a honest and straightforward way how to manage a state of the art workflow. While professionals will walk away with sound advice and archiving tips, this presentation will also be of benefit to amateur photographers who are concerned with saving the precious moments of their family history.

WD will have a product expert on hand to show off new features on their current drives as well as field the most difficult of questions.

Joe DiMaggioJoe DiMaggio is an internationally known photographer who’s been making award winning photographs for four decades. His dynamic photographs have appeared in Time/Life, Sports Illustrated, Time Magazine, HBO and the list goes on. One of his Sports Illustrated covers was selected by Time Magazine as Picture of the Year. DiMaggio made the obvious transition to advertising work for fortune 500 companies and was extremely sucessful doing photo illustrations for companies such as AT&T, AOL, Barclays, Xerox, Computer Associates, HBO, RJR Nabisco, Sony, Verizon, and Ford Motor Company. DiMaggio has contributed as an international pool photographer, to several Olympic Games. During his illustrious career DiMaggio’s done radio talk shows, television shows, magazine articles, and lectured at some of the most prestigious colleges and universities throughout the world.

DiMaggio has been part of the American Photo Popular Photography Mentor Series. He’s hosted several ABC’s World of Photography television shows and hosted numerous Canon Photo Safaris. He’s hosted Internet TV’s Visual Impressions television show and completed numerous episodes showcasing his skill as a world renowned photographer

Recently, Sports Illustrated selected one of DiMaggio’s photos as one of the third greatest photos in the last 100 years of the Indianapolis 500.

The other day I was privileged to have lunch with a very dear friend of mine. Don Sergeant, an extremely bright, creative and dynamic Vietnam war veteran, whose main responsibility in this world is to save lives; a beautiful man. When we finished lunch, I stopped by The Forge Gallery and said hello to another dear friend, Phil Rachelson. Phil is not only a great artist, he also has the ability of generating great designs in his gallery. He displays the artwork in a way; it’s pleasant to the eye and geometrically sound. It’s a special Christmas show, to all the ships at sea, if you have an opportunity stop by and support the artists and the gallery. Great art at great prices. -Joe D.

Back in the day, when I was wet behind the ears, I had an editor introduce me to Jimmy Breslin. It was like meeting a god. Some people are great writers and then there are great writers that are born with an amazing talent; Breslin is one of them. There are no words that I could say about John Fitzgerald Kennedy, that would be remotely as poignant as one of the greatest articles ever written. So this blog has none of my photos and very few of my words, but let me be clear on one thing, other than my personal losses that have affected my life and my family, the two dates that I will never forget are November 22nd, 1963 and September 11th, 2001. To all the ships at sea, it’s time for me to shut up.

Newsday’s Jimmy Breslin wrote the following article for the New York Herald Tribune in November 1963.

Washington — Clifton Pollard was pretty sure he was going to be working on Sunday, so when he woke up at 9 a.m., in his three-room apartment on Corcoran Street, he put on khaki overalls before going into the kitchen for breakfast. His wife, Hettie, made bacon and eggs for him. Pollard was in the middle of eating them when he received the phone call he had been expecting. It was from Mazo Kawalchik, who is the foreman of the gravediggers at Arlington National Cemetery, which is where Pollard works for a living. “Polly, could you please be here by eleven o’clock this morning?” Kawalchik asked. “I guess you know what it’s for.” Pollard did. He hung up the phone, finished breakfast, and left his apartment so he could spend Sunday digging a grave for John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

When Pollard got to the row of yellow wooden garages where the cemetery equipment is stored, Kawalchik and John Metzler, the cemetery superintendent, were waiting for him. “Sorry to pull you out like this on a Sunday,” Metzler said. “Oh, don’t say that,” Pollard said. “Why, it’s an honor for me to be here.” Pollard got behind the wheel of a machine called a reverse hoe. Gravedigging is not done with men and shovels at Arlington. The reverse hoe is a green machine with a yellow bucket that scoops the earth toward the operator, not away from it as a crane does. At the bottom of the hill in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Pollard started the digging (Editor Note: At the bottom of the hill in front of the Custis-Lee Mansion).

Leaves covered the grass. When the yellow teeth of the reverse hoe first bit into the ground, the leaves made a threshing sound which could be heard above the motor of the machine. When the bucket came up with its first scoop of dirt, Metzler, the cemetery superintendent, walked over and looked at it. “That’s nice soil,” Metzler said. “I’d like to save a little of it,” Pollard said. “The machine made some tracks in the grass over here and I’d like to sort of fill them in and get some good grass growing there, I’d like to have everything, you know, nice.”

James Winners, another gravedigger, nodded. He said he would fill a couple of carts with this extra-good soil and take it back to the garage and grow good turf on it. “He was a good man,” Pollard said. “Yes, he was,” Metzler said. “Now they’re going to come and put him right here in this grave I’m making up,” Pollard said. “You know, it’s an honor just for me to do this.”

Pollard is 42. He is a slim man with a mustache who was born in Pittsburgh and served as a private in the 352nd Engineers battalion in Burma in World War II. He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.

Yesterday morning, at 11:15, Jacqueline Kennedy started toward the grave. She came out from under the north portico of the White House and slowly followed the body of her husband, which was in a flag-covered coffin that was strapped with two black leather belts to a black caisson that had polished brass axles. She walked straight and her head was high. She walked down the bluestone and blacktop driveway and through shadows thrown by the branches of seven leafless oak trees. She walked slowly past the sailors who held up flags of the states of this country. She walked past silent people who strained to see her and then, seeing her, dropped their heads and put their hands over their eyes. She walked out the northwest gate and into the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. She walked with tight steps and her head was high and she followed the body of her murdered husband through the streets of Washington.

Everybody watched her while she walked. She is the mother of two fatherless children and she was walking into the history of this country because she was showing everybody who felt old and helpless and without hope that she had this terrible strength that everybody needed so badly. Even though they had killed her husband and his blood ran onto her lap while he died, she could walk through the streets and to his grave and help us all while she walked.

There was mass, and then the procession to Arlington. When she came up to the grave at the cemetery, the casket already was in place. It was set between brass railings and it was ready to be lowered into the ground. This must be the worst time of all, when a woman sees the coffin with her husband inside and it is in place to be buried under the earth. Now she knows that it is forever. Now there is nothing. There is no casket to kiss or hold with your hands. Nothing material to cling to. But she walked up to the burial area and stood in front of a row of six green-covered chairs and she started to sit down, but then she got up quickly and stood straight because she was not going to sit down until the man directing the funeral told her what seat he wanted her to take.

The ceremonies began, with jet planes roaring overhead and leaves falling from the sky. On this hill behind the coffin, people prayed aloud. They were cameramen and writers and soldiers and Secret Service men and they were saying prayers out loud and choking. In front of the grave, Lyndon Johnson kept his head turned to his right. He is president and he had to remain composed. It was better that he did not look at the casket and grave of John Fitzgerald Kennedy too often. Then it was over and black limousines rushed under the cemetery trees and out onto the boulevard toward the White House. “What time is it?” a man standing on the hill was asked. He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes past three,” he said.

Clifton Pollard wasn’t at the funeral. He was over behind the hill, digging graves for $3.01 an hour in another section of the cemetery. He didn’t know who the graves were for. He was just digging them and then covering them with boards. “They’ll be used,” he said. “We just don’t know when. I tried to go over to see the grave,” he said. “But it was so crowded a soldier told me I couldn’t get through. So I just stayed here and worked, sir. But I’ll get over there later a little bit. Just sort of look around and see how it is, you know. Like I told you, it’s an honor.”

Hi to All the Ships at Sea,
Let’s see if I got this right-I don’t like Photoshop, right? Right. I don’t like software where you can manipulate images…right? Right. I believe everything should be done in the camera…right? Right. Never crop, right? Right. Less is more, right? Right. Digital will be just like 8-tracks, it’ll never last. So let’s check out the reality, I guess it’s impossible to be right all the time.

The photograph of this young lady catching a cod-fish off the coast of Prince Edward Island, up until today, was flat, muddy, indistinguishable and almost two stops under. There’s a technical term in photography for a photo like this…it’s blank blank blank blank. Well through a little bit of work in Photoshop and NIK software it came alive. The young lady’s name is JoAnne Kalish.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that ALL of my brothers and sisters would like to thank you for your service. Without the heroism of all of the armed forces, we would not be able to live in the greatest and freest country in the history of mankind. I thank you and everyone in the country thanks you. To all the ships at sea, the next time you see a man or woman in uniform, thank them for their service. They will give you back the warmest and kindest smile you’ve ever seen.

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"In a world that seems to be moving at light speed, the new technologies should be embraced. We as visual communicators should always remember the photograph comes first. The content is more important than the pixels or the manipulation after the fact.
My love affair for this medium has only grown ten-fold. With the advent of digital it’s like starting all over again. Our future generations will look back at this time the way we looked back to the Lumiere brothers. What a great time to be involved in photography and filmmaking."
~Joe DiMaggio

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